Mounting evidence suggests that localized episodes of disordered brain activity, like avalanches in a sand pile, help keep the overall system in healthy balance. In 1999, the Danish physicist Per Bak proclaimed to a group of neuroscientists that it had taken him only 10 minutes to determine where the field had gone wrong. Perhaps the […]
Monthly Archives: February 2016
Creating a brain?
CREATING A BRAIN? Researchers have developed a functioning miniature replica of the human brain, composed of neurons and glial cells, to help study and better understand neurological diseases. Source here
MAN-MACHINE FROM THE GREEKS TO THE COMPUTER
The Anthrobotics Cluster at the University of Edinburgh / The CRAG – Creation of Reality Group Aram Vartanian MAN-MACHINE FROM MACHINE TO THE COMPUTER (in P. Weiner ed., Dictionary of the History of Ideas, vol. 3. New York: Scribner, 1973) The man-machine idea occupies a strategic and fateful position at the confluence of several disciplines […]
Using Stories to Teach Human Values to Artificial Agents
Using Stories to Teach Human Values to Artificial Agents Mark O. Riedl and Brent Harrison School of Interactive Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology Atlanta, Georgia, USA Abstract Value alignment is a property of an intelligent agent indicating that it can only pursue goals that are beneficial to humans. Successful value alignment should ensure that an […]
The Anthrobotics Cluster
‘The distinction between us and robots is going to disappear.’ Rodney Brooks, Robot: The Future of Flesh and Machines, 2002. The Crag – Creation of Reality Group, directed by Luis de Miranda – is co-developing The Anthrobotics Interdisciplinary Network at the University of Edinburgh along with the school of informatics, with Ram Ramamoorthy and Michael […]
Public round-table on ‘Creation of Reality’ with Tim Ingold, Christopher Beedham, and Alan Bundy
CRAG CONFLUENCE December 2015 A public round-table presented by Luis de Miranda, director of the Crag, University of Edinburgh Tim Ingold (University of Aberdeen), Anthropology Alan Bundy (University of Edinburgh), Artificial intelligence Christopher Beedham (University of St-Andrews), Linguistics
The Question Concerning Technology, by Martin Heidegger
Text for the 24th February session of the Crag reading group LLC 50 George Square Room 3.30 6 pm ‘In what follows we shall be questioning concerning technology. Questioning builds a way. We would be advised, therefore, above all to pay heed to the way, and not to fix our attention on isolated sentences and […]
Physicists in England claim they have discovered how to create matter from light
Physicists in England claim they have discovered how to create matter from light, by smashing together individual massless photons– a feat that was first theorized back in 1934, and has been considered practically impossible until now. If this new discovery pans out, the final piece of the physics jigsaw puzzle that describes how light and […]
THEORIES OF TECHNOLOGY AS EXTENSION OF HUMAN FACULTIES
THEORIES OF TECHNOLOGY AS EXTENSION OF HUMAN FACULTIES Below is a link to a preprint version of the following article: Brey, P. (2000). ‘Technology as Extension of Human Faculties.’ Metaphysics, Epistemology, and Technology. Research in Philosophy and Technology, vol 19. Ed. C. Mitcham. London: Elsevier/JAI Press. ‘The idea that technology is an extension of the […]